Mistletoe for Merlin and Gwaine
by renrenren3
Summary: Gwaine is drunk, and there is mistletoe. Things just happen.


Try as he might, Uther hadn't been able to erase all traces of the Old Religion from his kingdom. Some traditions were rooted too deeply, going back for thousands of years, and it would be impossible to get folks to stop celebrating the winter solstice. So instead Uther had taken over the celebrations, hosting a large banquet at the castle and distributing food to the people so that the festival had turned into a celebration of his own kingdom.

It was all pretence, obviously. Out of the king's earshot everyone was singing the old songs, hanging bells and burning candles to chase off evil spirits. It reminded Merlin of his childhood in Ealdor when he used to do the same things with his mother, and Hunith would make a garland with evergreens and hang it in front of the door to bring in luck for the year to come.

If he thought too much about it Merlin would start to get a little homesick and wishing he could visit his mother and his friends. Which he couldn't do since he was stuck with the hardly enviable task of protecting the annoying future king of Albion, so Merlin tried to bury himself in work and not think about anything else.

It wasn't difficult to bury oneself in work around that time of the year. Between helping with the preparations for the feast, taking care of Arthur's elaborate festive clothes, helping him choose presents for his father and his knights, and this on top of his regular duties, Merlin reached the night of the banquet feeling like he was dead on his feet.

Arthur hadn't been going easy on him either, making him run back and forth to fetch tankards of mulled wine and trays of sweetmeats. Thankfully he was paying host to the daughter of some lord and after a while he had got distracted by their conversation and forgot about Merlin.

This didn't mean that Merlin was free to slack off though. For from it, since there were still a hundred people in the room and apparently everyone had an endless stomach and was in constant need of food and drinks. But at least now nobody was calling specifically for Merlin and making snarky comments when he took too long to fetch and carry or reported that there were no more apple pies in the kitchen.

Merlin was about to disappear into the kitchens for a while and see if that leftover roast chicken was still around when someone called, "Merlin!"

He turned around and his face split into a huge grin when he realized that Lancelot was the one waving at him. "Merlin, join us," Leon called too.

At the high table Arthur was still engaged in conversation so Merlin quickly walked over to the knights' table. Lancelot and Leon shuffled their chairs to make room for him and he dragged a chair between Lancelot's and Gwaine's, sighing happily as he sat down.

"It's a busy night," he commented, helping himself to a cream pastry.

Lancelot nodded sympathetically and reached for the flagon of mulled wine. "Have a drink," he said, only to pull a face when he realized that it was empty. "Gwaine," he said, reproachfully.

Gwaine grinned at him, leaning back in his chair. "It was good wine," he said. He was slurring the words a little and his eyes were not completely focused and Merlin knew him well enough to realize at a glance that Gwaine was drunk again.

Lancelot rolled his eyes. "Ignore him," he told Merlin. "It's awful to be sitting next to him when he's like this. I can never get a drink in peace, he keeps stealing my goblet."

"It's this why you're making me sit between the two of you?" Merlin asked, grinning. This brought a round of laughter from the other knights, who had all at some point been subjected to Gwaine's drunken antics.

"More wine," Gwaine said brightly.

Merlin couldn't quite figure out if it was a question or a request. "I'll get some," he said but before he could get up Lancelot put a hand on his arm.

"Don't bother, we can ask one of the servants," he said while Leon was already gesturing to a serving girl.

Merlin would have pointed out that he was a servant too, but he figured he could take it easy just for that once. He had earned it.

He shot a quick look to Arthur and saw that the prince looked fine: nobody had tried to kill him yet that night and anyway he was a big man, he could manage without Merlin for a few hours. He gratefully accepted a cup of wine and decided that his goal for the rest of the night was to finish off the cream pastries in front of him.

Over the next hour Merlin realized that feasts were quite fun, at least when you were sitting at a table instead of running around at Arthur's beck and call. The knights traded stories and discussed recent events and Merlin shared the story of the time Arthur had fallen from his window into a pile of horse dung.

Just as Lancelot had predicted, Gwaine kept stealing Merlin's wine all evening. Eventually Merlin decided that the only solution was to steal Lancelot's wine. Lancelot looked at him with a face torn between annoyance and amusement and then eyed Leon's goblet. Leon gave him a stern look and declared he would challenge whoever touched his wine, but the effect was spoiled when he started laughing halfway through the sentence.

Shortly after midnight the knights began to excuse themselves and leaving in twos and threes. "We should get going too," Leon said, pushing himself to his feet. "We've got patrol duty tomorrow."

Merlin waved them goodnight and considered going to bed as well. Gwaine was still at the table, sleeping with his head pillowed on his arms, and Merlin shook him awake. "Shouldn't you go to your room too?" he asked. "Don't you have patrol or training tomorrow?"

Gwaine cracked one eye open and groaned. "Yeah," he said. "I wish Arthur had given us the day off."

"Me too," Merlin agreed. He tugged at Gwaine's elbow. "Come on, let's get you to bed."

They stumbled out of the hall together. Merlin was a bit drunk. Gwaine was very much drunk but he could still walk without needing to lean against the wall for support. Still, Merlin thought it would be better if he made sure Gwaine reached his room without falling down the stairs and breaking his neck.

"It was nice of you to sit down with us," Gwaine said apropos of nothing as they turned a corner. "Instead of Arthur."

Merlin laughed. "I can't really sit next to Arthur," he said, thinking of Arthur's affronted face if he heard such an insubordinate suggestion.

"Why not?" Gwaine insisted. "You're important. You're the prince's manservant."

Merlin shook his head but Gwaine seemed to like the subject. "There's only one of you," he continued, scrunching his eyebrows together as he tried to figure out something. "And there's... I dunno... But many, many more of us." He gestured vaguely to Camelot's emblem on his surcoat. "Stands to reason that you're more important than a knight."

It seemed pointless to argue with a drunken man. "Right you are," Merlin said and caught Gwaine's elbow as he was about to wander off in the wrong direction. "We're almost to your room, come on."

"Wait!" Gwaine exclaimed, freezing in the middle of the corridor.

"What?" Merlin asked, a little nervously, praying that Gwaine wasn't about to be sick all over their feet.

Gwaine pointed up dramatically. "Look," he said with the tone of someone who had just made a great discovery.

"Oh, the mistletoe," Merlin replied, following the pointing finger to the sprig of mistletoe dangling from a hook in the ceiling. "I helped put it up through the castle a couple of days ago."

"You know the important thing about mistletoe?" Gwaine asked.

"It withers and loses leaves and you keep having to sweep them away or some prince will complain and toss boots at you?" Merlin replied with a dry smile. It was funny how Arthur had been upset about the mistletoe, but maybe he had a reason to be since he had to walk around the castle arm in arm with the visiting lady all day.

At the time, Merlin had smirked and told Arthur he'd just have to hope that his lady didn't know about the tradition.

"Don't you know about the tradition?" Gwaine asked.

"Yeah, if a couple passes under the mistletoe they have to kiss," Merlin replied without thinking, still distracted by his memories.

He got no warning at all before Gwaine pulled him down to press their lips together. There was a moment in which Merlin was flailing and almost falling to the floor, but Gwaine wrapped his arms around Merlin's waist to steady him.

Merlin opened his mouth to ask him what he was doing and in hindsight this was a poor move since it meant that his mouth was now open and Gwaine was quick to take advantage of that.

Merlin's brain was torn between 'Gwaine has got his tongue down your throat!' and 'This is actually very, very good' and 'Maybe if you're lucky you won't remember this in the morning'.

At some point Merlin closed his eyes and fisted his hands in the front of Gwaine's coat. He smelled like wine and spices and probably shouldn't have felt so good as it did.

When Merlin drew back it was reluctantly, more because he needed to breathe than because he wanted to stop.

"What was that?" Merlin managed to ask as soon as he regained control of his voice.

Gwaine smirked at him. "A kiss?" he supplied helpfully. Merlin couldn't figure out if he was too drunk to care or too used to kissing friends. With tongue. In dark corridors. While holding them in his arms, and it was around that point that Merlin realized that Gwaine's hands were sliding down his back to cup his arse.

His breath caught in his throat and he leaned into Gwaine before remembering himself. "Stop," he said, pushing the other man away. "We can't do this."

"Do what?" Gwaine asked, reluctantly breaking away from him. "We aren't doing anything. I liked it better when we were kissing," he added wistfully.

Merlin was privately inclined to agree. "That was just because of the mistletoe," he said instead.

Gwaine considered this. "What if we brought the mistletoe back to my room?" he suggested.

It was such an outrageous idea that Merlin was sure Gwaine could see him blush even in the flimsy half-light of the corridor. But Gwaine was looking at him with his dark eyes, almost holding his breath.

If this was a bad idea, it might have been the best bad idea that Merlin ever had. "Yeah," he said. He stepped forward and planted another soft kiss on Gwaine's lips. "Yeah, that might just work."


End file.
